Whenever I go to the grocery store I try to grab a tub or two of sour cream, but considering I try to avoid going to the grocery store as much as possible, this never lasts for very many meals. The other day I really wanted to make poppyseed chicken, and I REALLY did not want to go to the store for sour cream, so I broke out my little pantry can of sour cream powder and decided to risk ruining the recipe with it. Well I have to say, it was a completely suitable substitution. Hurray!

Now knowing me, of course my next thought was “could I make this entire MEAL shelf stable”? That was quite the adventure but I’m happy to let you know that it is possible, and delicious. And your families will be thanking you in a powerless emergency that you can make something absolutely normal (and delicious). Please note, I do not pretend that this is a “healthy” meal, proceed with caution.

Here is the scoop on the recipe and the substitutions I made:

Poppyseed Chicken (original recipe)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds chicken, diced and boiled
2 cans cream of chicken soup
12-16 oz sour cream
1/2 cup melted butter

Topping:
1/2 cup melted butter
2 tubes ritz crackers, crushed
2 T. poppyseeds

Directions:
Combine cream of chicken soup, sour cream, and butter. Pour over cooked chicken in a 9×13 pan or a slightly smaller oval casserole dish. Combine topping ingredients in small bowl. Sprinkle over top of chicken mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until heated through. Cover with foil until the last 5 minutes or the topping may get browner than you like. Serve over rotini noodles.

Poppyseed Chicken (shelf stable version)

Ingredients:
1 qt jar home-canned chicken or 3 cups freeze-dried chicken reconstituted
2 cans cream of chicken soup (or 20 ounces bean flour cream of chicken)
1 1/2 cups sour cream powder, rehydrated with 3/4 cup water
1/2 cup butter powder, rehydrated with 1/2 cup water

Topping:
1/2 cup butter powder, rehydrated with 1/2 cup water
2 tubes ritz crackers, crushed
2 T. poppyseeds

Directions:
Combine cream of chicken soup, sour cream, and butter. I happened to be out of cream of chicken soup this day too, so I used the bean flour cream of chicken recipe doubled, and then only used 20 ounces of it. It seemed to work just fine in this recipe but I still like cans of cream of chicken for the ease on some days. Pour over chicken in a 9×13 pan or a slightly smaller oval casserole dish. Combine topping ingredients in small bowl. The rehydrated butter is a lot more runny than regular butter, but it doesn’t mix with the ritz like normal melted butter would. It ended up being more mushy rather than crumbly. Use your hands to sprinkle over top of chicken mixture as best you can. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until heated through. Cover with foil until the last 5 minutes or the topping may get browner than you like. Serve over rotini noodles.

As I am looking at this picture I realized that I think it is a picture of my ritzy potato recipe rather than poppyseed chicken, hehe, but it is quite similar ingredients and you can see the texture of the sauce and the topping made with powdered butter so I will leave it in here. That will teach me for taking a picture in my phone of a yummy recipe and then wait for months to get around to posting it on the blog! I blame my pregnant brain.

One great way to have information off line is through books, printed recipes, and your Food Storage Made Easy Binder.

Food Storage Books

We have done a number of Food Storage Book reviews that we wanted to remind you about, and encourage you to figure out which books would best fit your needs. These are great things to ask for as gifts, or to give as gifts. Here are some of our current Food Storage Book reviews, along with some books we will be reviewing in the future:

Emergency Food Storage in a Nutshell – REVISED review to reflect the new edition
Country Beans – Amazing book on all things beans
Cooking with Food Storage Made Easy – Cute book with tons of easy recipes!
Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes – Treasure trove of great information
Dinner is in the Jar – A different approach to food storage

It’s in the Bag – COMING SOON
The Dehydrator Bible – COMING SOON
Cooking with Sunshine – COMING SOON

Food Storage Recipes

Recipes is probably one of the MOST important things to have in print format. Not only will it save your laptop from tomato slime by having it in the kitchen, but you’ll be able to cook without power and internet!

For some great tips about building your recipes offline see these posts:
How to Organize Your Recipes – Jodi shares her approach to compiling recipe binders with a great little tutorial
FREE Shelf Stable Cookbook – Compilation of over 200 shelf stable recipes you can print out and add to your binder

Food Storage Made Easy Binder

As a part of our Food Storage Made Easy ebook binder, we’ve included tons of informative articles and recipes you can turn to in times of need. We also encourage you to print other resources you find online or at classes you may attend and put it into your binder. Use the binder as your main go-to resource for building and using your food storage.

Enjoy, and good luck keeping it together this holiday while USING your Food Storage!

MULTI-GRAIN PANCAKE/WAFFLE MIX

Grind in wheat grinder:
3 cups wheat
½ cup rye
½ cup sweet brown rice
½ cup barley
½ cup oat groats

Add to above:
2 cups powdered milk
1-1/2 tsp sea salt
½ cup Rumsford baking powder (Rumsford rises best)

Mix all above together and store in FREEZER in Gallon Ziplock Bag for best freshness.

When ready to use, mix together the following:
1 cup of the above mix
3/4 cup water
1 egg or 1 powdered egg (1 Tbsp powder and 3 Tbsp water)
2 Tbsp oil
1/4 cup sugar

After mixing together, let sit for about 5 minutes or so — then, ready to use as pancakes or waffles!

HOMEMADE CORNBREAD MIX

Combine:
5 cups flour
5 cups freshly ground cornmeal
3-1/3 cups white or brown sugar (I prefer brown) – YUMMY!
1-1/3 cups dehydrated margarine or butter
1/4 cup powdered milk or powdered buttermilk
1/2 cup dehydrated egg white or whole egg
2-1/2 tsp baking soda
2-1/2 tsp baking powder
2-/12 tsp salt

Store in plastic container or ziplock bag in fridge or freezer until ready to use. Makes 14 cups of mix.

For a 9 x 9 pan of cornbread (we prefer in pan rather than as muffins — for some reason, tastes more moist), mix 3 cups of above mix with 1 cup of water.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes. GREAT WITH HONEY BUTTER!

Well this week I wanted to share a silly reason why I am so grateful to have my food storage. On Saturday I had to bring “funeral potatoes” to a funeral for someone in my church. For those who don’t know, this is just a creamy potato casserole with a crumbly topping, my family likes to call them Ritzy Potatoes. My “pregnant brain” completely spaced this fact until about 45 minutes before the potatoes were supposed to be at the church. This was not enough time to boil potatoes and cook the dish. I started to panic when I realized, duh, I have some freeze-dried potato dices in my food storage. Might as well try them out now!

It took about 1/2 of a #10 can to make one batch of funeral potatoes, so they definitely aren’t a cost-effective way to eat potatoes on a regular basis, especially compared to my “free” garden potatoes I’ve been eating the last few months. But they sure saved me in an “emergency”!

Shelf Stable Ritzy Potatoes

So here is the funny part of this story. My husband was so sad when they brought back the empty casserole dish because he had been salivating over the smell of them all afternoon. So the next day I planned to make another batch for our family but realized I had used the last of our sour cream the day before. So I did what any good food storage blogger would do and decided to do an experiment and try the recipe with ALL SHELF STABLE INGREDIENTS. It actually turned out fantastic! And as we were eating it my husband kept giggling to himself thinking how funny it was that in an emergency we could have something so delicious and NORMAL to eat. So here is the shelf stable version of the recipe for you. Try it out, it will not disappoint.

Ingredients
4 cups freeze-dried potato dices
1/3 cup dehydrated onion flakes
2 cans cream of chicken soup (or 20 ounces bean flour cream of chicken)
1 cup sour cream powder, hydrated
3/4 c. freeze-dried cheddar cheese
1/2 c. powdered butter, hydrated
2 tubes ritz crackers crushed

Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Soak your potato dices and dehydrated onions in warm water. In a separate bowl, soak your freeze-dried cheddar cheese. While they are soaking, mix up your sour cream powder with water. My can said 1/2 cup of water per 1 cup of powder, it made a thin sour cream which is good for this recipe. Stir in your cream of chicken soup. (I don’t store much cream of chicken any more as I prefer to make my own. So I made a double-batch of bean flour cream of chicken and then measured 20 ounces of it into the bowl with the sour cream). Drain your potatoes and pour them into a 9×13 casserole dish. Drain the rehydrated cheese and add it to the cream mixture. Pour the cream mixture over top of the potatoes and stir together well. In a small bowl mix up your powdered butter. My can said to do 1/2 cup butter powder and 1/2 cup water. This made a REALLY watery butter. Add the crushed ritz and mix well. It will be quite goopy but it still works (I would probably just use regular butter for this since I store a ton of it in the freezer but I was going for all shelf stable here). Using your hand, crumble the ritz mixture over the top of the potatoes. Cover the dish with tinfoil and bake for 30-40 minutes or until hot all the way through. You can remove the foil for the least 5 minutes to get the topping a little more brown and crumbly.

Summary

Now a lot of these ingredients are NOT cheaper than buying fresh. We do not encourage you to make it a habit of replacing all of your foods with powdered or freeze-dried versions. But we DO encourage you to buy some, try it, learn how to use it, figure out the recipes it works in, and then store it! You will appreciate being able to make a lot of your “normal” family recipes in troublesome times.

If you are looking for places to buy some of these more uncommon storage items, check out the different companies on our Useful Links page.

Learning to cook with your food storage causes a lot of people to use foods they aren’t used to, to try lots of new recipes using these new foods, and to tweak their own recipes to make them more food storage friendly. Having a good system in place can save you a lot of hassle, and it can also save your laptop from getting trashed by keeping it open on the kitchen counter while you cook. Not to mention you need your recipes in a usable format in case you can’t use the computer during an emergency situation.

How to Make a Recipe Binder

Step 1: Buy a few 1/2 size binders, depending on the number of recipes you will have.
I started with 2 binders of different colors. One for main dishes, one for sides and desserts. I got these ones at Wal-Mart. I recently added a third one specifically for “Food Storage Recipes” that I wanted to keep track of separately since they aren’t our normal family favorites. This binder is a little nicer and has the plastic around it that you can slide a cover or side label in so I liked it. I got this one at Office Depot I believe.

Step 2: Buy colored paper or card stock.
I color code my recipes so at a glance I can easily get to the right section. For example when I am doing my weekly or monthly grocery lists I choose a variety of chicken recipes or beef recipes depending on what’s on sale and how much meat I am buying. For chicken recipes I know to look in the red section. This works for me but you don’t have to do it that way if you don’t want. You could do all one color and just alphabetize them. Using card stock will make them a little more sturdy, but also makes less pages able to fit in one binder. Paper works just fine too. I chose my paper depending on the colors that were available at Wal-Mart, so one batch is paper and the other is card stock.

Step 3: Buy 1/2 page sheet protectors
These are a little bit hard to find. When we first came up with this idea they were not available at any local stores so we ordered a big batch of them online to share between a few of us and they were pretty cheap. I have found them at office stores recently when I have needed to buy more. They are a little pricy but I LOVE the half page size. They are perfect to keep on the counter and you can fit a lot of recipes in one binder.

Step 4: Make your recipe file
There are a few ways to do this depending on how computer savvy you are. My cousin decided to make an Access database for hers. I am not that ambitious so I made a few different word documents. You can just type up two recipes per page making sure you start the second recipe halfway down the page. This is easy, but hard to make turn out evenly. You can also set your document to be 2 “pages” per sheet of paper and then you can line up the text at the top of each page. This is how I did it for my first two binders. (You can download my file to get an idea for how this works, I can’t guarantee compatibility with your computer setup though).

I just figure out a way I think is easier that I am starting on for my food storage recipes binder. I set my pages to landscape and do one recipe per page, formatting them to fill up as much of the page as possible. Then when I go to print it I can simply choose “print 2 pages per sheet” and it will shrink the pages and print them two per page. It’s awesome! Make sure you can find that setting for your printer before you setup your whole binder file this way though. I like to put the product category at the top of each recipe, even though I use the color coded pages too. You can choose to do that or not.

Those methods make pages that sit horizontally in your binder, you can also make vertical pages if you like your recipes that way instead. You will just have to set up your pages differently.

Step 5: Print your recipes and cut the pages in half
Make sure you pay attention if you are doing the color coded pages. You will only want to print one category at a time to make sure that you are using the right colors. After you have them all printed, you can cut them in half with a little scrapbook paper-cutter or just use any scissors. Just depends how perfectly even you want them to be. Slide all of the pages into your sheet protectors. I put two recipes in per sheet protector so they show on the front and back. If you wanted to figure out double-sided printing you could get away with using less paper, but it was getting too complicated for me to do that so I just cut each one out separately and stuck them both in.

Step 6: Enjoy and SHARE!
I LOVE how my binder sits on my counter and I can wipe the sheet protectors clean if I slop on them. I love making notes with a dry-erase marker and updating my typed recipes next time I am adding to the recipe file. I love printing or clipping out recipes to try, and sticking them in temporary sheet protectors until I try them or have time to add them to my file. And best of all, now I can easily SHARE my recipe file with family and friends. They can put it together in a way that works for them, or I can make a cute binder for them for gifts

Country Beans New ideas for “User Friendly Beans” in a hurry by Rita Bingham

Background: Learning how to use and cook dry beans was a major journey of mine last year. I was always skeptical you could do anything with dry beans before embarking on my “learn how to use beans” journey. If you’ve followed us for awhile, you probably were there when I made the “Magical Fruit” discovery on how to use dry beans to make cream of chicken replacements, and when I finally learned how to actually COOK dry beans. Most of my bean discoveries and learnings have come from the fabulous book “Country Beans”.

What I Liked: What I liked most about this book is how all-inclusive, and simple it is. Rita doesn’t assume that you’re an expert chef and gives you a lot of background information. Most of the time, when I get cookbooks I think to myself “Oh that recipe looks good, but I’ll have to go grocery shopping for half those mystery items”. When I opened the book and started looking at the recipes, I had a ton of them immediately tagged as recipes I could make right away. Rita also includes hundreds of GLUTEN-FREE recipes in this book. Using bean flours is a great way to replace gluten in a lot of recipes.

Sections: This book has more than recipes. It is full of information about using, storing, and cooking beans as well. Here are the sections the book contains. There are so many sections I’m going to do a screen shot of them because typing them out would take forever! Notice all the fabulous sections at the end! When I got this book I really needed education, not just recipes so it was great!

Feedback: The only drawback of this book is that there aren’t pictures for the recipes. Some people will only get books with pictures, but I felt like I didn’t really need the pictures with this book.

Summary: Quit being afraid of using your beans and get this book! “Country Beans”

The theme of the pot luck was salads, so I decided to make a pasta salad. I’ve been using my freeze-dried chicken a lot lately. I admit, it’s a little bit due to how busy I’ve been. Having chicken cooked, and cut all ready to go, has saved my eating out budget a few times lately. Isn’t summer supposed to be less busy? Anyways, I made this pasta salad with chicken in it, and it was ready in the 25 (actually 24) minutes from start to finish. I love not having to thaw, cut, and cook chicken, when I’m making a quick summer dish. I’ll share the recipe with you, but you have to remember, I’m not the measuring type- so bear with me- and excuse the dark, after the fact iphone picture.

Julie’s “Healthier” Pasta Salad

Box of whole wheat noodles (can be macaroni, or any kind – my fav is bowtie multi-grain)
1.5 cups of freeze dried chicken (before it reconstitutes)
Chopped celery (you could probably use freeze dried, I just always have fresh on hand)
Light mayo made with olive oil (you can use regular mayo)
Couple of squirts of lemon juice
1 teaspoon or 2 of dill (this gives it a nice flavor)
Salt to taste

Directions:
Cover freeze dried chicken in water to reconstitute. While the chicken is reconstituting boil the noodles. If you’re in a hurry like me, put a metal bowl in the freezer to get it cold (you’ll understand this in a minute). While the noodles are cooking, chop celery and get the rest of the ingredients out. Drain noodles and chicken, paper towel dry and throw it in the cold bowl and put all of that in the freezer for 5 mins to cool everything down. The freezer step is only necessary if you’re working on a fast timeline… But of course you probably all plan ahead better than me? Right? Add mayo to taste- some like it creamier than others. Add the rest of the ingredients, and cool until you have to leave.

So no one even knew I snuck that chicken in there and we made it on time. Success. Remember if you’re looking for ways to sneak food storage into your families foods, or tips on how to substitute out regular ingredients in recipes for food storage ingredients, read these posts.

• Sneaky ways to feed your family food storage.
• Our best tips for food storage.

1. Cook your regular family meals
Don’t crack open a food storage cookbook and make something totally foreign for your family. Take your regular recipes and try substituting out one or two items with “food storage” items. Chances are no one will even know the difference. Click here to check out some ideas for substitutions using some of our favorite recipes from a food blog we love.

2. Make a dessert!
Jodi’s dad (and Julie’s father-in-law) swears that he can taste whole wheat in everything and then promptly refuses to eat it and says it’s gross. Well we played a big trick on him last Thanksgiving in our “Great Cake Debate” experiment. We took one of our family favorite pumpkin cake recipes and made two versions of it (one with whole wheat and one with all-purpose flour). Read the post to see the results

3. Don’t be afraid to bake
One of the BEST ways to use up the hundreds of pounds of wheat in your storage is to start baking homemade goods. This is not something you have to do every day, or every week even. But if you find yourself with a free couple of hours some day, try making a batch of homemade bread. I don’t know ANYONE who doesn’t like fresh warm homemade bread out of the oven, even if it IS made of whole wheat. This Honey Whole Wheat Bread recipe is great to start with since it uses half white and half wheat flour (see tip #4 below). If bread is too intimidating, or you don’t have a wheat grinder yet, try cooking up some blender wheat pancakes or homemade corn bread.

4. Mix half and half
If you cook using all-purpose flour, you can always swap half of the flour (or 1/4 if you are really nervous) with fresh ground whole wheat flour. If you use hard white wheat you will get even less of that “wheaty” flavor. By mixing it half and half you lessen the chances that your recipe will fail, and also lessen the chances that your family will notice!

5. Get the right tools to help you
Julie had a bean problem for a long time. She (and her family) hated beans and it was mostly because she could never get them to turn out right. Jodi had a similar problem with rice so she was always using minute rice instead of the bulk rice from her food storage. Both of us solved our cooking dilemmas by buying (and overcoming our fear of using) an electric pressure cooker. Check out Julie’s bean tricks for perfect beans and how Jodi now uses rice as part of her food storage diet.

6. Use vegetables in soups or stews
If you have decided to stock up on freeze dried or dehydrated vegetables as part of your food storage plan it is a good idea to sneak them into some soups or stews first. Once you let out the secret that you used food storage in the meal, you then have a better chance of getting them to try some of the vegetables as a plain side dish at a future meal. (“These are the same carrots I used in that beef stew you loved honey”).

7. Get your family INVOLVED!
Julie’s boys are always helping in the kitchen (her 4 year old son wanted to buy his Grandpa a pressure cooker for Christmas). And Jodi has her kids help with all of her canning projects and love harvesting from her garden. When kids (or spouses) have helped contribute to a meal or to preserving your foods they are much more likely to give it a try. It’s hard to pull the “That looks gross” card when THEY are the ones that cooked it. So get your family to participate, and then watch as they proudly sample (and most likely ENJOY) the fruits of their labors.

We thought it would be fun to share with you how we’ve used typical food storage items in some “Our Best Bite” recipes so you can see how easy it is to use your food storage. We encourage you to do this with your own recipes, and recipes from your favorite recipe blog. We recommend only substituting one ingredient at a time, so you can isolate variables, in case something doesn’t turn out right the first time.

DISCLAIMER: We take pictures with our iphones AND we haven’t mastered the art of making food look so darn cute. Don’t let our amateur photos trick you into thinking the food isn’t yummy! Also, READ until the end for a chance to win your very own “Our Best Bites” cookbook.

GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
CONGRATS TO SHANNON WHO WAS THE WINNER!

The girls at “Our Best Bites” have a great cookbook. You can buy it HERE, or enter to win a FREE copy by posting a link to this post on your facebook wall to help encourage your friends to incorporate food storage into their everyday cooking

GIVEAWAY INSTRUCTIONS:
Copy and paste the following link into your status or as a link on your wall:
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2011/07/11/our-best-tips-for-food-storage

After you have posted the link on your wall, come back here and leave a comment saying you did.
We will randomly pick a winner from the comments on this post this Sunday at 5:00 pm MST

(If you don’t have a Facebook account, you may enter by leaving us a comment telling us which recipe from OurBestBites.com you’d like to try)

Ingredients:
2 3-oz packages blue jello
2 3-oz packages strawberry jello
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin (Knox brand)
14-oz can Eagle Sweetened Condensed Milk

Optional Ingredients:
Freeze Dried Strawberries (I used Thrive brand)
Freeze Dried Blueberries (I used Thrive brand)
Spiff-E-Whip (I found this at Wal-Mart but you can get it online at that link)

Directions:

Gather all of your ingredients.

Make your blue layer of jello. Mix 2 packages of blue jello with 2 cups of boiling water until dissolved. Then add 1 cup of ice cold water and stir. Pour into a 9×12 pan. Sprinkle freeze-dried blueberries evenly into the pan and stir them in so they are covered with liquid. Let set in fridge for 4 hours or overnight.

Make your white layer of jello. Sprinkle 2 envelopes of unflavored gelatin into 1/2 a cup of cold water. After it thickens, add 1 1/2 cups of boiling water and mix in until it dissolves. Stir in the can of sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Let cool (but don’t leave it out too long or it will start gelling like mine. Oops!) Pour over hardened blue layer. Let chill for 4 hours or overnight.

Make your red layer of jello. Mix 2 packages of blue jello with 2 cups of boiling water until dissolved. Then add 1 cup of ice cold water and stir. Sprinkle freeze-dried strawberries into the liquid. Pour entire mixture over top of white layer. Let set in fridge for 4 hours or overnight.

Once the red layer has set firmly, you can decorate the top with a flag if desired. I mixed 1 cup of Spiff-E-Whip with 1 cup of ice water and beat with a mixer for about 3-4 minutes until it had a whipped cream consistency.

While beating the whipped cream, I reconstituted some freeze-dried blueberries and strawberries for the topping.

Spread the whipped cream over top and decorate like a flag. (You might want to plan better so that you actually have room for 13 stripes, unlike mine). Here is a view showing all the layers and the top!

DIG IN! That white layer is divine. MMMM. Happy Independence Day!

You may now download ALL the Shelf Stable Saturday recipes for free.
Click here for details.